Planning Board OK With Medical Offices

The Planning Board on Monday granted permission for two office buildings to begin using their general office space for medical offices and let the separate applications do so without adding extra parking.

The board voted unanimously to allow CJS Corporate Center, located on a three-story office complex at 1451 Highway 34 south, to turn its only vacant space into a office for a local general surgeon.

The change would give CJS a deficit number of parking spaces – 147 where 150 are required – and the company asked the board to waive that requirement.

Owner John Caruso told the board that the 29,400-square-foot building is occupied with tenants holding long-term leases except for an 1,800-square foot section. That space he would like to lease to Cynthia Kocsis, a general surgeon, if the board would waive the parking requirement.

Kocsis testified that she keeps office hours only three days a week. The other two days, she said, she is in surgery. Kocsis said there would be no more than two patients in her office at any one time and that no surgery would take place at the office.

Speaking in favor of the application was Megill neighbor Richard Smith who urged the board to approve the application, calling Caruso a “good neighbor’’ who “runs a nice, neat operation.’’

The application was approved unanimously.

Also approved was an application brought by Cernero Children Trust, which has an existing office building on a 2-acre parcel at 2101 Route 34.  The applicant, which already has approval for substantial  office space, asked the board to consider changing a part of that approval from general office space to medical office space.

“It’s merely a re-allocation of existing office space to medical office space from general office space,’’ said John Vincenti, the project’s engineer.

Like CJS, however, that change would also leave them a few parking spaces shy of the requirement. The company asked the board to approve the change despite being short eight parking spaces.

Speaking against the application was 1st Avenue resident Fred Meyer who expressed concerns over the lighting and the traffic at the site.

The board said they would send out one of their own inspectors to check on the lighting and made lighting one of the conditions of its unanimous approval.